From poo to 無: an occasional series

Regular readers and occasional visitors will know a little of my quest, this year, to turn dog poo into 無, as documented with all hopefulness in this entry and its follow-up some time later.  Over time, the process has proved untenable, I am sad to say.  (This post is tender but earthy: caveat lector if you go beyond the cut.)

Specifically, the amount of water required to first to lift the layers of detritus (hair, bark and wood, plastic and other fragments) from the composting mass, and then to flush the mass itself, has proved much larger than the twenty litres, once a week, suggested in the manufacturer’s instructions (I suspect it is closer to eighty litres or more, often twice a week, merely to keep the thing in process).

Additionally, not all the detritus escapes the composting matter, so that the pit of stones intended to facilitate drainage is now interwoven with a felty mass of hair and bark that has been through the gastro-intestinal tracts of five dogs.  It isn’t green, or pretty, if you know what it is you are looking at (although an innocent eye would see nothing other than some curiously dusty stones and the green lid of a buried bucket).  I have a strong stomach when it comes to my animals, but I do not wish even a small section of my property to be permanently decorated with their gut-felt.  On this waste-disposing project, I call a respectful Partial Fail.

Having said all this, I remain in good conscience and delicate turbinates unable to go back to the old method of bagging and biffing all the dogs’ waste.  Supermarket bags, though capacious, don’t break down in landfill and indeed prolong the life of the waste matter itself, which becomes sweaty and stinky and unpleasant indeed even after just a few minutes in such a bag.  Other dog-owning acquaintances of mine give back to the land more directly, shovelling poo into a pit the size of which is associated with the luxury of owning more land than I; and indeed with real acreage one simply lets the dogs loose far from the house and bothers no further.  The terms of my individually-issued licence to keep five dogs, however, prevent such laissez-faire approaches, as do my above-mentioned sensibilities.

I have, I hope, found a via media in biodegradable plastic bags, sourced from the same supplier as imports the composting toilets.  These are not as large as supermarket bags but function well nonetheless: they open out to retangular dimensions and hold around ten days’ waste for five dogs, without tearing in the way that supermarket bags do.  Once full, I tie ‘em tight with a cable tie and they go out with the household rubbish.  The different composition of the plastic is what, I presume, prevents the waste from sweating, so that the amount of post-collection odour involved is thus far no greater than the lightly-stinking pit of what remains in the dog toilet.  In terms of their biodegradability, I must trust the manufacturer, on whose truthfulness this whole project rests.  It is, I hope, a semi-green sort of compromise, delaying the 無 but conveying away the poo.

(This post owes its genesis to a conversation with Stephen on gmail chat, to whom I also apologise for the nuggets of gory detail with which I discussed the topic at the time.)

Tagged as: biodegrable plastic bags, composting toilet for dogs, poo, 無